--I'm out of work from the end of December, officially. I have a letter even, on letterhead. My time at the bank helping to build an awesome Institutional Banking product or two is over, the bean counters have had their day.

I'm ok with this, things have changed at the top of the bank at it doesn't look like fun there for a little while.

There are downsides, I loose working with my awesome colleagues. At 12 years of IT experience I am still kind of the junior by weight of years, which is kind of fun. Also my colleagues are very smart, and don't have egos.

They are very very good at solving problems under utterly intense pressure. The pinches where we have had to problem solve with this job are very tight, and bad things happen not just to the workplace but potentially to the entire country if our software didn't work really really well.

At times it didn't and we fixed it really fast.

I also loose what I'd call my coffee buddy, but what the Americans might call a 'workplace spouse'. It is a good friend who is a confidant and also a colleague, where you have crossed over boundaries normal in workplace relationships.

I'm 32 hours in with this knowledge and I've got 7 leads for new work to chase. I've had to write them down because at 7 leads I need to work the opportunities like a salesman with a big client base.

My plan is to take Jan off and then work again in Feb. I would have mostly done this anyway if my current contract hadn't been trimmed.

I'm not sure to do more of the same but in a bigger, even more awesome team, to do some really really short term consulting, or to do something quite different.

I can filter opportunities by start date and project type, and favour them by language, this should make the process pretty easy. Hope my obscure skill set can be matching to a position, life is good for me when this happens.